The Ring - An Alex Dorring Thriller

by Vince Vogel

  “No, sir.”

  Brown was staring at the blade.

  “It was the end of Catholicism in England,” Harris went on. “The emergence of the Church of England. Of Protestantism in this country. No more pandering to the Pope in Rome. Now the king becomes the head of the church and all live under him. My family made its name from the great purge of the Roman Catholic church. They ransacked churches and burned priests at the stake, as well as bishops, cardinals and anyone else who refused to relinquish their allegiance to the Pope. They killed, tortured and destroyed until the country was purified of Romans. Even today, we see the consequences of those actions.”

  “Why’re you telling me this, sir?” Brown muttered.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There are many men like me in the Ring,” Harris pointed out. “Many whose families have older and far more important names. These men are intrinsic parts of the fabric of our nation. They are never going away. We are knights of something far greater than the small parts that make it up.”

  He glanced up at Brown from the blade. The latter was rigid with fear.

  “I shouldn’t know your name, sir,” he said.

  “No,” Harris said. “You shouldn’t. A custom we hold dearly in the Ring. You make your money and don’t question who gives your orders or why. You slink off to your nice little home, to your nice little family, and enjoy your wealth. You see and do evil and insulate your conscience with money.”

  “Isn’t that what we all do?”

  “My money only insulates me from discovery. From threats. As far as my conscience is concerned, I feel nothing. Not a thing. Those girls are ours. The boys too. All of them. They make out that a human life is so precious, but in truth, any pair of morons with a working cunt and balls can do it. Children spill out of wombs every single second of every single day. Every dead man is replaced by two babes. A never-ending supply filling the world up with useless waste. Can you look at me in all honesty and tell me that most of it isn’t just human waste?”

  Brown didn’t say anything.

  “We do what we do because we can,” Jacob Harris went on. “They call it a perversion of the flesh, but in the times of my ancestors, a fifteen year old girl would have already had several children. Some queens were married before puberty to men older than their fathers. And yes, they were expected to perform on the wedding night. Most women were spent by twenty.”

  “Why’re you tellin’ me this?” Brown asked once more.

  “Because I believe you’re owed an explanation.”

  “An explanation of what?”

  “Of this!”

  The movement was swift and Brown almost didn’t believe it had happened. The arm had swooped across and then Jacob Harris had been still again. It wasn’t until Brown felt the blood pouring from his throat and the muscles of his neck go taut that he knew what had happened. He reached up and grabbed it with his good hand.

  Jacob Harris stepped back from him. He didn’t want to get blood on his yachting shoes.

  “The girl was precious to a former friend of mine,” Jacob Harris said. “She belonged to him and I stole her. Why? Because I hated to see him in love. She was his precious little pet and I stole her away to work in one of our brothels like any other common little whore. Now he knows I had her all along. There’s going to be a war within the Ring. And all I have to protect me,” Brown reached forward and stumbled, falling face first off the table, “is failure.”

  Mr. Brown lay prostrate, choking and gagging, a pool of blood spreading out from his neck.

  “And I cannot abide failure,” Jacob Harris hissed down at him, glaring at Brown as the latter breathed his last.

  43

  Duggy was dragging his bones through the dusty mid afternoon streets, sidling his way through the hustle and bustle of the tourist traps. He walked past the barred fence of Buckingham Palace. At its gates, right in front of the Queen’s Guard standing outside his little shed, the tramp stopped and raised a middle finger to what he thought might be her bedroom window, making the throngs of tourists turn from their camera lenses at the strange performance. Then he was on his way again, dodging in and out of the crowds.

  He reached the Thames. A set of stone steps led down to it at the edge of a bridge. There was a rusty gate. It was never locked. He pulled a few fat garbage bags out of the way and creaked the thing open before disappearing down the steps, having replaced the bags and closed it behind him.

  The tramp reached the bottom and walked along a pathway that straddled the bank of the wide, filthy river. A tall brick wall shadowed him on the other side. He walked underneath a bridge, entering the shadows of the city, stopped and checked behind him. Nothing.

  He stood for over a minute, watching.

  All he saw was the empty pathway and the sunlight glimmering off the surface of the oily river.

  So he turned and continued.

  The bridge traveled over an old storage depot where they once kept corn when the river fed the city. There were little storage spots all along the Thames from those days. Rooms under bridges or built into the banks. Cubby holes that could house people.

  The door was covered in sheets of tin. It made it look like you could never open it. But Duggy knew.

  He pulled the corner of the sheet at the very top. Then he pulled a piece of string that sat beneath. It was attached to the handle on the other side. Tugging on it tight, he used his free hand to pull the door towards him before slipping through the gap and returning it to its former position.

  The room was pitch black, but aroused his other senses. The sound of rats scuttling about in the dust filled his ears. He felt one touch the end of a bare foot and quickly kicked it away before it decided to bite. As for the air, it was thick with the smell of damp. Duggy didn’t light a match or use a flashlight. He didn’t need to. He knew the room by heart. Directly ahead was a passageway. He stepped through the rats and into it. A cold breeze hit him and ran its fingers through his untidy hair. It was nice after walking through the sun, and the air chilled the sweat on his face. At the end of the passage, he emerged into a large room and immediately heard voices on the other side of it. There were smaller rooms at the far end. The doors to them were long gone. Taken for scrap. The room in the farthest corner had a soft light glimmering from its doorway.

  It was the one Duggy headed for.

  “And how is Shirley?” Duggy said when he reached the doorway.

  The old woman inside the damp brick room froze and turned her big eyes sharply on him. She was bent over a small fire. A long skirt that had once been blue but was now gray from dirt hung from her large behind and draped all the way down to her feet, so that it swished about in the dust when she moved. On top, she wore a thick, knitted jumper like a sea captain would wear in winter. She was short and looked fat underneath her rags. But Duggy knew she was skin and bones under there. It was the multiple layers of clothing that she wore. That she always wore. Winter, spring, summer and autumn. It was twenty-five celsius outside and pretty warm in here around the fire, but still she wore those layers like a suit of armor. Her face was covered in dirt and the lines of wrinkles worked their ways along her cheeks, around her mouth and eyes, and across her brow, which was creasing in the middle as she gazed at Duggy. Jowls hung loosely from her chin and throat, and her hair was a thick mop of frizzy gray.

  Duggy took his eyes from Shirley and gazed at the far corner, where the girl was.

  Her eyes watched him at the doorway. She was still frightened of him, Duggy remarked in his head. But he didn’t take it to heart. Hell, she looked like she was frightened of the whole world, so it wasn’t like he was being discriminated against.

  “They’re lookin’ for you, missy,” he said to her, wagging a bony finger at the girl.

  She pulled up the filthy blanket she was holding so that it was up to her chin.

  “You ain’t gotta be ’fraid o’ me,” the old tramp said, stepping towards
her from the door.

  Shirley stepped across the room from the fire and intercepted his path.

  “You leave her be, Duggy,” the old woman said, wagging her own finger at him.

  Still gazing at the girl, he said, “She said much?”

  “Nah,” Shirley replied, turning to the girl with a benevolent expression. “She ain’t ate nothin’ neither. We should take her somewhere.”

  The girl began to murmur and shake her head, pulling the blanket all the way over so she was covered.

  “But that’s the reaction I gets ever time I ask,” Shirley said.

  “Police are lookin’ for her,” Duggy said. “Gave me their card.” Then addressing Jess, he added, “People wanna help ya. Policemen, darlin’. You should go to them.”

  The girl didn’t say a word. Merely stayed underneath the blanket.

  “She need help, Shirl,” Duggy said in a hushed voice. “I only came by ta tell ya I was gonna call them.”

  “But the girl’s ’fraid, Duggy. Maybe at’s the police what wanna hurt her.”

  “Of course it ain’t,” Duggy exclaimed with a frown. “There’s a whole search party out for her. They been on the news this mornin’. Apparently the girl went missin’ ten year ago. Her mum and dad’s out there. They wanna see her.” Then, stepping forward past the old woman and crouching down before the girl so that his eyes were level with her covered face, he addressed Jess in a soft voice, “People gonna help ya.”

  The head shook from side to side underneath the blanket. He gently pulled it away to reveal her pale face.

  “You look like you ain’t ever seen the sun, girl,” Duggy remarked softly. “There’s another man what come by. I think he’s the one what’s after you. The one you runnin’ from.”

  Her eyes widened at him. Shirley came rushing over.

  “What man?” she barked at him.

  Duggy held his hand up to her and waved her away.

  “I’m speakin’ to the girl,” he said, not taking his eyes off Jess. “He was short, but well built. Looked like a tank. But he had a face that not even his mother could love. Like the face what you see on gargoyles.”

  Jess’ wide eyes stared at him and a look of terror grew on her face. Her fingers gripped the edge of the blanket and screwed it up in her fists. She began to tremble.

  “He had curly, black hair like a Turk’s pubes,” Duggy went on. “You know him, don’t ya? He’s been roun’ lookin’ for ya. Offered money for ya. It won’t be long before he speak ta someone what knows Shirley like I do and wanna take that money. It’s a lot for a man on the streets. Enough to make him a real man for a month at least.”

  As he said this, a sound echoed from across the vast room outside and appeared to come from the passageway. Shirley was like a rabbit. She immediately ran to the doorway and stared out. The end of the passage was at the edge of the light provided by the fire. She saw the glimmer of a shadow and rushed back inside.

  “You,” she said to Duggy. “You’ve brought him here.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You led him here.”

  “No.”

  Suddenly Jess was standing behind them, the blanket dropped to the floor.

  “We need to run,” she said.

  Both tramps gazed at her for several seconds. It was the first thing she’d said the whole time they’d had her.

  “I’ll see him off,” Shirley said. “Don’t you worry.”

  She grabbed up a piece of wood that was standing up against the wall beside the doorway. It had been placed there for this. She picked it up and rushed out of the doorway.

  “No, don’t!” Jess screamed out.

  But it was too late. The old woman had burst out the door and was thundering across the room toward the shadow. When she was ten yards from the passageway, the man emerged. He was short with black, curly hair. His face was that of a gargoyle.

  “You stay away, ya hear!” the old woman said, storming up to him.

  He stopped and gazed at her with a malevolent scowl plastered over his ugly face. A grin gradually emerged on his thin, little lips and he wagged a finger at the old woman, shaking his head.

  “I’ll show you,” Shirley cried as she lunged forward and swung the piece of wood.

  He easily dodged back from it so that the old woman missed completely and fell forward. Like a matador, he swooped to the side again as she swung madly around with the wood. Something glinted in his hand. As she missed another pass, he violently grabbed Shirley by the back of the neck, pulled her into him and drove the blade into her ribs. The old woman cried out as she slumped to the floor, the wood dropping from her hands.

  Standing over her, the man leaned down and began plunging the knife into her back over and over, having to pass through two inches of fabric on its way. The armor she wore could protect her from the cold, but it was no good against the knife. She groaned loudly and then went silent as she lay in a heap of rags on the dusty floor, his blade still stabbing into her.

  The man eventually stopped and stood up from her. He turned his attention to the shimmering light of the doorway. Duggy and Jess stood in it with horrified faces.

  The man didn’t say a word. All he did was put his head down and march towards them.

  44

  Philip Foster returned to his office and found it occupied. A man was sitting in his desk. A man he’d only ever met once in his life. The day he’d received a medal off him in front of all the staff at MI6 HQ.

  It was Lord Lawrence Grayling. Second in command of MI6.

  He resembled a vulture. Long neck and a thin beak of a nose. Bald on top with white hair along the sides.

  “Close the door, Mr. Foster,” he said as the latter stood gazing at him from the doorway.

  Foster did as he was asked.

  “Sit down.”

  It was odd being given commands in his own office. But, still, the man sitting at his desk was his superior. In fact, he was his superior’s superior.

  Foster sat in a chair opposite while Grayling stared malevolently at him, giving the impression he wanted to burn the man to ash with his glare.

  “Do you know the meaning of the word espionage?” Grayling asked him.

  “I believe so.”

  “Then tell me,” Grayling said like a good schoolmaster.

  “The use of spies to gain information on enemies.”

  “That’s what the dictionary says, but it doesn’t really go into the detail. Does it?”

  “I suppose not, sir. But may I ask what this is all about?”

  “You may not.”

  Grayling’s look became even sterner than it already was.

  “Getting information off our enemies,” he went on, “is of the utmost importance to the safety of those ants crawling around out there.” He pointed at the window, the London skyline spreading out all the way to the horizon. “We can also use it for our own good.”

  Foster was trying his hardest not to frown. It was becoming harder by the second.

  “Spying tends to be best done when our enemies are vulnerable,” Grayling’s speech continued. “For years, it’s been getting them vulnerable that’s been the hardest part. The former Soviet Union with its KGB taught us many many things. Especially when it came to making people vulnerable. Do you know how many of ours went over to them during the Cold War?”

  “I don’t, sir.”

  “More than came over to us. That rat Philby, for one. Do you know I worked with him? He was my superior. I actually have to admit that I trusted the bastard. Philby was caught out by falling in love with the wrong woman. She led him right to the Soviets. Most of those men defected after being caught in vulnerable situations with women. Often very young ones.”

  “Is this about this morning, sir?” Foster dared to ask.

  Grayling’s top lip curled. He seemed annoyed at the question.

  “You were commanded, were you not, to help bring 192 in,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. The two men put
with me failed.”

  “Yes. I saw what he did to one of them. Ran him down with a car. That makes him an enemy of the state.”

  “He’s a lot of things, sir. But not an enemy. 192 has proved himself to us many times in the past.”

  “He’s an enemy,” Grayling said more forcefully. “Your sentimentality regarding this issue is obvious.”

  He stared right into Foster and the latter wondered if Grayling knew where he’d just returned from. He thought he’d slipped away unnoticed. Had they followed him?

  He tried not to let it show.

  “I understand, sir,” he said.

  “I hope you do, Mr. Foster.” He paused for a moment, turned to the window and gazed out at the city. “Do you know who gave you the details for the Iranian nuclear scientist all those years ago?”

  “You mean Ali Bulragi?”

  “Yes. Do you know where the intel came from?”

  “No, sir. I was never privy to the source.”

  “It was our friends at the Belgravia. Ali Bulragi was on the crest of atomic discovery. Five years off making Iran full nuclear. Because of his deviant tastes, we found him out.”

  “You bugged the rooms?”

  “We monitor many exclusive places in the city, Mr. Foster. We control—”

  “Sex trafficking,” Foster said.

  Grayling turned sharply from the window and met him with his burning eyes.

  “The oldest trade in the world,” he said chillingly.

  “Fifteen-year-old girls?”

  “Yes. They used to marry them well before that age. Not that long ago either, when you consider the whole of human history. Hell, in some parts of the world, it’s still the norm.”

  “It’s pedophilia,” Foster muttered.

  “Don’t be so naive,” Grayling snapped at him. “You remember Mohammad Bin Said? Carlos Rivero? Diego Paladinho? Joshua Van Beek? Stefan Gotze? Abdel Fatih? All men we got to through intel gathered from such places as the Belgravia all over Europe.”